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The Relationship Between Image and Spectator: the Case of the Advertisement

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The Relationship Between Image and Spectator: the Case of the Advertisement Sanders 0 The Relationship Between Image and Spectator: The Case of the Advertisement Jean Sanders Art, Literature, and Contemporary European Thought Professors Isabelle Alfandry, Marc Crepon, and Michael Loriaux December 12, 2019 Sanders 1 At one time in history, advertisements were confined to the print page. In contemporary society, we are surrounded by them everywhere we look. Advertisements did not truly enter the private sphere until the first television advertisement aired in 1941.1 In less than a century, advertisements have firmly invaded almost every aspect of our lives. They remain ubiquitous on the print page, on billboards on the streets, and on televisions in our homes. Now, they are even held in our hands. Furthermore, they are now pointedly targeted, as corporations use personal data to tailor advertisements to specific subsets of the population. As they become omnipresent, it is more important than ever to examine them closely and with a critical lens. Advertisements are images that serve a specific and unique role, firstly because of the type of image that they are. Herbert Read writes that “the artist cannot in any effective way avoid the economic conditions of his time; he cannot ignore them, for they will not ignore him.”2 This is certainly true: Karl Marx describes art as being a part of the superstructure of an economic system.3 Images can be processed, understood, and analyzed through the lens of their role in the economic system under which they were created. However, advertisements are images that have an even closer connection with their economic system. In modern times, art can be used as a tool to propagate an economic system and a political ideology, like in the case of Soviet Socialist Realism in the 20th century. In this case, these images must be understood and analyzed not just 1 Daniel Ganninger, “The World's First Television Commercial,” Medium (Knowledge Stew, July 14, 2019), https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/the-worlds-first-television-commercial-4f0b73f27b07#:~:ta rgetText=) ​ 2 Herbert Read, “What Is Revolutionary Art?” (ART THEORY, accessed December 3, 2019, http://theoria.art-zoo.com/what-is-revolutionary-art-herbert-read/) ​ 3 Isabelle Alfandary, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (class lecture, Topics in Comparative Literature: Critical Modernity: New Forms, New Experiences, l’Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, France, November 11, 2019). Sanders 2 through their status in culture and society, but also in close connection to this economic system. Although it is often the purpose of works of art to change the way that people think, in the case of advertising this purpose is more explicit: to exert influence over people’s beliefs, desires, and actions. Furthermore, the role of spectator to image is changed when a spectator is viewing an advertisement, because the spectator is also firmly inhabiting the role of a consumer. There are many conflicting ideas about the relationship between spectator and image. Writers such as Jacques Rancière have attempted to de-emphasize the power of the image in order to accentuate the individuality of the spectator, while other thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Guy DeBord have argued that the image is a dangerous and powerful tool with the capability to affect masses of people in the same way. Depending on how the relationship between spectator and image is defined, the critical value, transformative properties, or revolutionary ability of images changes as well. DeBord’s explanation of this relationship emphasizes the power of the image, and places the image as the very object which mediates relationships in society. Some would argue that images are an incredibly powerful tool in the process of the fetishization of commodities. However, Rancière has an opposite stance in reaction to these opinions, and argues that the dissensus of the contemporary aesthetic regime means that the image does not have the power others have assigned to it. There is a pre-existing body of literature from the 20th century that examines the role of an image and the relationship between spectator and image for many different types of images, but none of them focus on advertising. However, the ideas put forth about whether or not images have the power to affect the masses, what type of freedom spectators have, and the mechanisms by which images are persuasive can be utilized to examine Sanders 3 the case of the advertisement. How can the relationship between spectator and image inform the relationship between consumer and advertisement? This paper will argue that the relationship between consumer and advertisement cannot be analyzed on an individual scale because advertisements are proven to have the ability to change the attitudes and actions of society as a whole. A de-emphasis of the power of the image ignores this persistent effect on society, and the mechanism by which an image persuades not just individuals, but masses of people, is clearly at play in the case of the advertising image. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin traces ​ ​ mechanically reproduced images, or works of art, from lithography to photography to the sound film. Not only is advertising certainly a mechanically reproduced form of artwork, it is also one that Benjamin would say is similar to the film in that it is “completely subject to or [..] founded in, mechanical reproduction.”4 Benjamin’s point of view for critically analyzing mechanically produced art is also useful, because he writes that “the question of whether photography is an art” is a futile one, and the “primary” question should be “whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art.”5 In outlets like Forbes and The ​ ​ ​ Harvard Business Review many articles have posed the question: Is Advertising an Art? This ​ paper will try to situate advertising within the pre-existing body of literature written about art, regardless of its status as art or non-art, and to examine in which ways advertising has 4 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm) ​ 5 Ibid Sanders 4 transformative properties or critical value. In analyzing mechanically reproduced art Benjamin writes of the concept of aura: “One might subsume the eliminated element in the term ‘aura’ and go on to say: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements.”6 Aura is a negative phenomenon in that it is only experienced when it is lost -- when it is present, it is not noticed, but its absence, according to Benjamin, is felt and changes the nature of the artwork.7 When art is mechanically reproduced the aura is absent, because the aura is what constitutes the aesthetic experience as unique, and mechanically reproduced works are inherently not unique because there is no original and each copy is identical.8 One question seemingly posed by his piece is: What are the political and aesthetic consequences of the loss of aura?9 He writes that “mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art.”10 One of the ways that it does so is through the shift from contemplation to distraction. He writes: 6 Ibid ​ 7 Isabelle Alfandary, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (class lecture, ​ Topics in Comparative Literature: Critical Modernity: New Forms, New Experiences, l’Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris, France, November 11, 2019). 8 Ibid 9 Ibid ​ 10 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm) ​ Sanders 5 “Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise. The film with its shock effect meets this mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention. The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.”11 The idea of the spectator as an absent-minded and distracted examiner who is not paying full attention to the image in front of them is also present in the spectator-image relationship when it comes to advertising. Television advertising “engages the audience in low-involvement learning.”12 Due to the fact that the spectator is paying little attention to the advertisements on television, they are engaging in “learning without involvement.” This phenomenon is described by Michael Schudson in “Advertising as Capitalist Realism” when he writes: “In such learning, people are not ‘persuaded’ of something. Nor do their attitudes change. But there is a kind of ‘sleeper’ effect. While viewers are not persuaded, they do alter the structure of their perceptions about a product, shifting ‘the relative salience of attributes’ in the advertised brand. Nothing follows from this until the consumer arrives at the supermarket, ready to make a purchase.”13 Just as Benjamin describes the spectators of films to be distracted examiners, as are the consumers in front of the television, in that they are “relatively unwary.
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